"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Alliances" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

She remembered seeing the Millennium, brand new and sparkling, docked on the
base’s secure ring. She had wanted that ship. After the battles she fought, the risks
she had taken, the way she had saved her crew and the mission, she felt she had
deserved that ship.
And Galland had used those emotions. Used them all.
She made herself focus on the statue of a man on a horse on one of the
bookshelves. It was a Remington, from Earth, twentieth century. She knew because
Galland had told her. And she had looked it up one afternoon while lounging in her
quarters. If the bronze statue was the original, it was priceless. It had once stood in
the Oval Office of the White House, back when Ronald Reagan was president,
centuries ago.
Had Galland stolen that, too? Or had he bought it?
She didn’t know. Anyone could get rich out here, and still serve in the Patrol.
Getting rich wasn’t illegal. It seemed like very little was any more.
Damn him.
“So,” she said, “you’re even taking the Millennium away from me.”
“Roz, you’re the one who proved that full-sized vessels can’t survive intact in the
Cactus Corridor. That nebula would be dangerous without the Ba-am-as and their
mines. But the fact that the Ba-am-as claim it and defend it, and the Corridor is filled
with more debris than the average nebula, make it the most treacherous area of space
out here.”
“I’ve flown it,” Roz said.
“And lost a ship doing so.”
“If regulations hadn’t insisted on one: successful completion of a mission and two:
crew’s lives above all else, I’d‘ve gotten the damn ship out.” She took a deep
breath. “I want the Millennium on this mission.”
“No.”
“And since this mission’s off the books, I’m not following regulations.”
“Roz-”
“What are you going to do, Allen?” she said, being as disrespectful to him as he was
to her. “Throw the book at me? You can do that already. If you want me to go, and
it’s clear you do, you do it my way.”
“See the prototype first,” he said.
“Has the prototype flown any farther than this base?”
“No.”
“Have its weapon systems been tested in real battles, not simulations?”
“No.”
“Has it ever flown in anything other than optimum conditions?”
“No.”
“Then you give me the Millennium, or you find someone else to take this little joy
ride of yours.”
“I’ll have your ass, Roz.”
She smiled at him. “It seems that you already do, Allen. There’s not a lot more that
you can threaten me with. You do it my way, or it’s not going to get done. Or did
some other captain wrap a noose around her neck like I did?”
He stared at her for a long time. Then he sighed. “All right,” he said. “You have the
Millennium.”
“Somehow,” she said, “I’m not overjoyed.”
Roz was even less overjoyed when the Millennium hit the Cactus Corridor. The
Corridor was the name the Patrol had given one of the larger nebulas in this part of